Instructions

ZOOM IN by clicking on the page. A slider will appear, allowing you to adjust your zoom level. Return to the original size by clicking on the page again.

MOVE the page around when zoomed in by dragging it.

ADJUST the zoom using the slider on the top right.

ZOOM OUT by clicking on the zoomed-in page.

SEARCH by entering text in the search field and click on "In This Issue" or "All Issues" to search the current issue or the archive of back issues respectively. If you would like to clear the your search, click on your browser refresh button.

PRINT by clicking on thumbnails to select pages, and then press the
print button.

SHARE this publication and page.

ROTATE PAGE allows you to turn pages 90 degrees clockwise or counterclockwise.Click on the page to return to the original orientation. To zoom in on a rotated page, return the page to its original orientation, zoom in, and
then rotate it again.

CONTENTS displays a table of sections with thumbnails and descriptions.

ALL PAGES displays thumbnails of every page in the issue. Click on
a page to jump.

31
POLICY • Vol. 30 No. 3 • Spring 2014
ANguS KeNNedy
Dylan Farrow’s ‘charge of abuse’ against Woody
Allen ‘was instantly credible to me’. Rather than
seeing society as confdent in its moral values, it
is truer to see certain sections of it (the state and
public gures) as being in search of a moral project.
What passes for morality is in fact better
characterised as a state of moral indi erence.
Te routine question, ‘Who are you to judge?’,
is actually expressive of a profound indiference
to you: it represents a contemptuous dismissal
of your judgement, of the public exercise of your
reason, as something that does not matter. It was
in this way that John Bercow, the speaker of the
House of Commons, and his wife Sally mounted
a defence of their notably elastic marriage after she
was photographed kissing another man in a West
End nightclub. Sally told the Evening Standard she
had ‘nothing to be ashamed of ’, that ‘all marriages
are diferent’, that she ‘couldn’t give a damn what
people think’, and ‘let people judge me if they want’.
John was equally on message in the Independent: ‘All
marriages are diferent from each other and I think
that there’s something to be said for people looking
after their own business and allowing us to look after
ours’. What John’s each-to-his-own principle reveals
is not tolerance, but an absence of moral standards
and a plea that we should treat the Bercows'
marriage, and in fact marriage in general, as itself
a matter of moral indiference: as something purely
pragmatic. So pragmatic, in fact, that even insisting
on some level of duty to one’s husband or wife on
the basis of a publically declared commitment of
mutual love can be considered as just so Victorian
and strait-laced.
Tus, there are two sides to contemporary non-
judgementalism. One is a form of easy-going moral
relativism. If Sally wants to snog in nightclubs
rather than mother her three children then who am
I to judge? I should be indiferent to her behaviour
because marriage itself is a matter of indi erence.
It is felt that there are certain areas of life where
judgement is considered inappropriate or old-
fashioned and not up to date with the complexity
and messiness and blended poly-diversity of
modern life. Tis side of non-judgementalism,
then, is the idea that some things are beneath moral
judgement in the sense that they are not worthy of
being judged.
e other side to moral indi erence is that
there are certain things that are considered to
be beyond judgement in the sense that they are
manifestly and self-evidently Evil. Child abuse,
rape, and genocide fall into this category: moral
absolutes that brook no questioning, admit of no
extenuating circumstances, and, therefore, require
no judgement. e action itself (or the accusation
of it) sufciently condemns the accused without
the need for trial. As society has become less and
less bound by traditional morality, so the number
of moral absolutes has increased in compensation.
Te Holocaust has mushroomed into multiple
holocausts at the same time as more and more
child-abuse scandals have been discovered—and
in some cases manufactured---to t a need for
moral certainty. Deny or question the force of these
contemporary moral absolutes at the risk of your
health, wealth, and liberty.
Together, these two aspects of non-
judgementalism serve to greatly reduce the space
available to moral judgement, leaving it a narrower
and narrower sphere of operation in between what
is considered to be beneath and what is deemed
beyond judgement.
e rst puts moral judgement o limits because
it is all too subjective. Te second introduces an
idea of moral objectivity which also precludes
judgement: this is a form of ‘evidence-based’
morality that licenses the operation of moral
experts and even moral scientists fearlessly to ‘tell
it like it is’, to reveal to lesser mortals certain moral
truths of which we would otherwise be ignorant
or complicit in their cover-up and denial. Te
simultaneous operation and interaction of these
two dimensions of non-judgementalism in moral
thought—the subjective and the objective, the
beneath and the beyond—explain the co-existence
of the contemporary fgures of the moral relativist
and the moral entrepreneur. And, contrary to the
super cial appearance of a society con dent in its
moral judgements, the existence of subjective and
What passes for morality is in fact better
characterised as a state of moral indifference.